FIREFIGHTERS TO BE HONORED AT TOYOTA SPEEDWAY SATURDAY NIGHT

ANNUAL FIREFIGHTERS APPRECIATION NIGHT:
TOYOTA SPEEDWAY, NASCAR & WHELEN SAY: THANK YOU!
Saturday, August 14:  Special Fire Equipment Displays


Irwindale, Calif. - - Another very special group of public safety professionals will be honored for their service on Saturday night, August 14, at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale.  

Firefighters (and their very important partners, their department administrative personnel), from every department and every corner of the state have been invited to a FREE* night at the NASCAR races.

“This special tribute is presented by our good friends and associates at Whelen Engineering, the people who provide the critically-important track safety warning systems for the Speedway and who are the leaders in design, and production of made-in-America alerting systems for police, fire, ambulance, and other emergency vehicles,” said Bob DeFazio, the track’s GM/VP.  “Whelen is an official NASCAR supplier, and sponsors several NASCAR divisions including the All-American Tour, the Modified Tour, and the Southern Modified Tour, all of which proudly carry the Whelen name.”  

And, of course, Toyota Speedway at Irwindale has relied on Whelen Engineering safety lighting systems since opening night 1999.

And, under that critically-important Whelen track safety lighting system there’ll be a full night of the kind of NASCAR action-adventure that “LA’s Half-Mile Superspeedway” has become very famous for.

How’s this for starters?  A double header for the top weekly division!  Two chances to fatten a points lead, or lose big, and two chances for some one down a couple of revs on points to leap up the chart big time.  Pay your entry fee and take your chances everybody, the Pepsi Super Late Models are out and about!  (Twice this Saturday!)  

Stats first: this is a 20-race series season for the Pepsi machines, that’s tough enough, but a two-fer for races 15 and 16 means extra pressure on everyone in the place.  Right now any combination of any one of the top five drivers losing 100 points (twin DNFs) and someone else picking up all 100 (twin wins) makes for a real interesting final four.  Here’s how they look coming in, we probably should be making odds here with two Las Vegas shoes leading the points chart … but higher math has never been a strong suit with this writer.

Justin Johnson from Glitter City, who’s won half of the 14 races run this season has a 48-point (that’s the points for a single second-place, by the way) advantage over teammate Dusty Davis (the other half of the glitter twins) 664 to 616.  Davis, by the way has won 3 races so far (that’s 10 of 14 for the team).  

Randall King from Fontana, who had a bad night last race, continues to hang on to third place with 588 in the bank at this point.  Ryan Partridge, presently scorching the King Taco Super Truck Series (see below) is pretty hot in the sedans as well, the Rancho Cucamonga driver holding 568 clicks in his hands (including one win, but consisting of a whole bunch of great finishes.  Blossom Valley’s David Beat has 476 points in fifth place and (like all of the others) the 100 points up are very attractive at this point.  

We mentioned the KTST’s a graph back, and frankly it’s getting pretty monotonous in that division (not if you ask Ryan Partridge of course).  Partridge has been perfect: nine for nine with five to go.  He’s got the full charge/max-you-can-win 450, but Todd Cameron (Monrovia), rookie Ken Maler, Jr. (Acton), veteran Dennis Arena (Duarte), and Matt Kimball (Mission Viejo) are all staying close at 396, 366, and 346, and 344 respectively.  Remember our good friends at King Taco also sponsor that great (FREE) on-track, pre-race autograph, photograph, and hero card session before each race at 5:45PM.

Some of the closest racing, on a track famous for close racing, this year has been provided by the Langers Juice S2’s.  These identical (spec) racers have really caught the fan’s eye and the points (with only four races left in the year) are tight.  Wilton, California’s Dylan Lupton and Roman Lagudi, from Las Vegas are tied for first at 448 point each.  

To use a total non-seguitor here, if the series ended now (which it won’t) Lupton, by virtue of his two wins (to Lagudi’s one) … you know.  Frequent flyer Kendall Lopez (she swoops in for the S2’s from her home in Independence) has strung together a great record of strong finishes and is not all that far behind with 418.  There’s 50 up for a win, just like every other night, but there’s getting fewer and fewer of them as the 2010 season winds out.

And then there’s the REAL reason that everyone will be at the Speedway on Saturday night:  Auto Soccer and Skid Plate Racing … this is the one-two bellyblow and uppercut that Hollywood has been hollering for since Garbo spoke, or Elvis got his hair cut for the Army!  This is big, this is star-quality stuff, this is where showbiz and racing collide forming something utterly amusing.  Imagine a 5 foot-tall steel ball weighing in at a few grams under 400 pounds … Now think about using your family car to shove that darn thing around like Pele making a run on Maradona … In the stirring words of the immortal Louis Armstrong:  “Now you has Jazz!”.

Ok, as if that was not enough, the young men and women League of Sparking Race Cars will do their flashy thing on the third-mile, throwing caution to the wind and a shower of sparks into the sky around Irwindale.  With heavy-gauge steel plates bolted to their back hubs instead of tires, these thrill-crazed combatants do battle in semi-slow motion, the odd correction or mistaken throttle application acting on the racer about 6 beats behind the actual application of steering wheel, brakes or power.  The Skid Plate Cars are no joke … but they are very funny!  Google/Tube: Skid Plate Cars and see what’s up.

Gates open at 4PM, Kids 12 and under are FREE, and the King Taco On-Track Autograph Party starts at 5:45PM Where?  Just like we said … right on the racetrack … and how cool (for kids 2 – 92) is that?  

By the way the adult admission price has not changed since opening night 1999.  It was a good deal then and an even bigger bargain now!  Buy tickets on line, read about last week’s race, find out what’s coming up, and much, much, more!  It’s all there at:  

www.toyotaspeedwayatirwindale.com

*Just show a valid department ID and you’re in FREE!



FLASH!  Young (17!) stock car phenom Sergio Pena will be back at the track where he wowed ‘em all at last year’s Toyota NASCAR All-Star Showdown with a hard-fought second place finish to NASCAR Sprint Cup regular, Joey Logano.  Pena loves this track and will have one of the fast Position One King Taco Super Late Models under him for the twin races.  (Remember, there are two complete Pepsi Super Late Model races on Saturday night)  Twice the fun!



ADD-ON:  And (we love to say this …) “IT’S A NEW TRACK RECORD!”  Last Thursday Tony Franco took his 12,000 horsepower “Terminal Velocity” Pro Jet Dragster down the 1/8-mile Toyota Dragstrip in 3.80 seconds notching a 209 mile per hour top speed in the process!  This eclipses his 207/3.82 record set just a month and a half ago ….


THANKS!